I gathered up a bunch of public domain eTexts a couple of years ago for the Other*Worlds*Cafe, and ran across this in my wanderings. I found it again yesterday when I was digging through some archives, and wanted to share.

This was excised from Dracula by Bram Stoker’s publisher due to the length of the original manuscript. It was published as a short story in 1914, two years after Stoker’s death. Enjoy!

DRACULA’S GUEST
1914
by
Bram Stoker

When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbruck (the maitre d’hotel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down bareheaded to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door, “Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late.” Here he smiled and added, “for you know what night it is.”

Johann answered with an emphatic, “Ja, mein Herr,” and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signalling to him to stop:

Here’s a quick project to get you in the Halloween mood:* Erin of Schlosser Design has a tutorial and downloadable pattern for making these cute fabric pumpkins.

It’d be fun to do a whole pile of these in different sizes and fabrics and use them as throw pillows or decorative accents. You could also fill them with plastic pellets instead of batting for a floppy beanbag pumpkin.

There’s lots of room for decorative excesses, too: Sew on buttons or charms, embroider pretty designs, use fabric paint or markers to give them jack-o’-lantern faces. Little personalized ones would make a cute hostess gift or wedding favor too.

Shadaughter headed for college last week (sob!), so I made a fuzzy laptop sleeve to keep her company. This is a fun project that looks harder than it actually is; I’ve put together a tutorial so you can have a monster of your own to cuddle.

Shadaughter’s tastes run more toward pink fluffy bunnies than black fluffy bats (she’s the white sheep of the family), so this particular design has a certain muppety quality. A few minor changes in color choice and decoration would make this much spookier.

I’m always looking for ways to insinuate dark things into more mainstream decorating schemes, and this type of project allows you to proudly display your bats by balancing them with songbirds. Extra points because the project is fairly small and doesn’t have to be complicated; it’s easy to be intimidated by something that requires a large investment of time or resources, but embroidery can be put down and picked up again whenever you have a few minutes to spare.

In addition to shams for bed pillows, this would be a fun motif for throw pillows or wall hangings. Do knights and dragons, vampires and victims, daydreams and nightmares…you get the idea.

The world’s largest social club and lobbying group, just beating out the Humanity of Man and the AARP. Future Corpses of America hosts awkward potlucks and sponsors holiday craft fairs in elementary schools. And they have one kick ass softball team.

I love the daintiness of these pieces, and the fact that most of them aren’t terribly spooky until you look closely. They’d be a nice way to keep a little gothiness around without scaring your houseguests.

I enjoy cross-stitch because it’s comparatively fast and uncomplicated, plus it’s easy to stop in the middle and pick it back up later. Here are some resources if you feel like stitching up something spooky.

Spazzmanda did a cross-stitch version of the Fargo movie poster by blowing up a JPG so big that she could see the individual pixels. There are loads of great movie posters you could do something similar with if you’re suitably dedicated: Halloween, Psycho, and Frankenstein spring to mind. If you don’t feel up to doing the whole poster, you could choose one or two iconic details and just stitch those.

I love the “Hey, wait a minute…” effect of this pattern. You could stitch a similar sentiment using just about any baby-themed design. (Hat tip to Memarie Lane)

Subversive Crossstitch offers kits and patterns for sentiments like “People Are Cattle” and “Don’t Make Me Cut You.”